-rn\* 



Second Edition 


A great city la that which has the greatest men and wo- 
men, 

If it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in the 
whole world. 

-WALT WHITMAN, 


NEW YORK: Published by Edwin C. Walker, at 
244 West One Hundred and Forty-third 
Street, In October, Nineteen Hundred and Five, 
Price, Fifteen Cents 


WHAT THE 

YOUNG 
NEED TO KNOW 

A Primer of 5ex Rationalism 



WHO 15 THE ENEMY; 

ANTHONY COMSTOCK 

or you? 

A Study of the Censorship 


BY EDWIN C. WALKER 


Of especial interest now because of the latest 
assault on MOSES HARMAN and “Lucifer” 

Price, 20 Cents 


DO YOU WANT FREE SPEECH? 


5y JAMES E. MORTON, JR, 


Another very timely pamphlet on the Censorship 
Price, 10 Cents 


THE CONSPIRACy AGAINST 
FREE SPEECH AND FREE 
PRESS 


By GEO* P'/BURN, PI. D. 


This booklet should be read by the careless and 
indifferent multitude, but it will not be; only you 
will care for it 

Price, 6 Cents; two copies, 10 Cents 


MODERN MARRIAGE 


By EP1ILE ZOLA 


Four pen-pictures of marital felicity in four de- 
grees of French life ^ Price, 1 5 Cents 


EDWIN C. WALKER, 

244 W. 1 43d St., New York City 


¥■- //C 



THE CRIME OF CREDULITY 


BY HERBERT IN. CASSON 


“Those who take for granted the freedom and advance- 
ment of the Twentieth century, and are unaware of the 
desperate conflicts that were waged by scientists and by 
thinkers to emancipate us from mystical superstitions, 
are being deceived by the new forms in which these super* 
stitions are being revived. Credulity in all its mystical 
phases is a crime against social progress. It is impossible 
to perpetuate a civilization based on skepticism and the 
endeavors of human reason, if the credulity and devout 
faith of the Middle Ages be revived.” 

Price, paper, 25 Cents; cloth, 75 Cents 

HOW THE UNITED STATES 
CURTAILS FREEDOM OF 

THOUGHT 


BY ERNEST HOWARD CROSBY 


“The North American Review.” examination of 
the dOHN TURNER case— a sample of the port- 
of=entry phase of our multiform Censorship 
Price, lO Cents 

THE SECRET INSTRUCTIONS 
OF THE JESUITS 


From the London Edition, Printed for JOHN 
WALTIiOE, OR., Over Against the Royal Ex- 
change in Cornhill, N.DCC.AAIII. 


Au defaut de la Force, il faut employer la Ruse.— Motto to 
Layer’s Scheme 

Price, 1 5 Cents 

THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL 

BY OSCAR WILDE. 10c, I 5c, 50c, $1, $5, $10 



EDWIN C. WALKER, 

244 W. 1 43d St., New York City 







Tyranny begins her argument by fettering free 
speech. Begin your reply by breaking your fetters.— 
NIRABEAU. 



Let us ponder boldly — ’tis a base 
Abandonment of reason, to resign 
Our right of thought— our last and only place 
Of refuge; this, at least, shall still be mine! 

Though from our birth the faculty divine 
Is chained and tortured— cabin’d, cribbed, confined, 
And bred in darkness, lest the truth should shine 
Too lightly on the unprepared mind. 

-BYRON. 



We see clearly that it is good for every man among us 
that he and every other man should be as strong, as 
tall, as well-knit, as supple, as wholesome, as effective, 
as free from vice or defect, as possible. We see clearly 
that it is his first duty to make his own muscles, his 
own organs, his own bodily functions, as perfect as he 
can make them, and to transmit them in like perfec- 
tion, unspoiled, to his descendants. We see clearly 
that it is good for every woman among us that she and 
every other woman should be as physically developed 
and as finely equipped for her place as mother as it 
is possible to make herself. We see that it is good for 
every woman that there should be such men, and for 
every man that there should be such women. We see 
it is good for every child that it should be born of such 
a father and such a mother. ... It is our duty to 
make ourselves acquainted, so far as we can, with the 
universe around us, and every part of it; to know what 
is known of sun, moon, and stars, planet, comet, and 
nebula; of beast, bird, and fish; tree, herb, and fungus; 
of human origins and human life; of institutions and 
laws, the right and the wrong of them. ... I main- 
tain . that everything high and ennobling in our na- 
ture springs directly out of the sexual instinct. Its 
alliance is wholly with whatever is purest and most 
beautiful within us.— GRANT ALLEN, “The New Hed- 
onism.’’ 






What the Young 

Need to Know 

A PRIMER OF SEA RATIONALISM 


BY EDWIN C. WALKED 


Second Edition 


For Humanity sweeps onward; where to-day the martyr stands, 

On the morrow crouches dudas with the silver in his hands; 

Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn, 
While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return 
To glean up the scattered ashes into History’s golden urn. 

—JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

•> * 

V)i 

■ ‘ , * 


NEW YORK; ' Published by Edwin C. Walker, at 244 West One 
Hundred and Forty-third Street, in October, 

Nineteen Hundred and Five. 

Price, Fifteen Cents 


Suggestions of Contents 


Is there Necessity for this Knowledge? 5 

Analogous Dangers and Safeguards, 6 

Unwisdom of Custom-sanctioned Ignorance, 7 

Teachers Better if of Opposite Sex, 8 

Divisions of the Subject, 9 

Definitions of Sex, 10 

Evolution of Sex; Differentiation, 1 1 

Reproduction Less and Less Perilous, 1 3 

Inestimable Value of Use, 14 

doy is Positive, Upbuilding, 1 5 

The Deciding Majority of Two, 1 7 

The Tendency to Multi-Selection, 18 

A Serious Error in Exchange, 20 

Effects of Meat, Stimulants, and Narcotics, 21 

Reproduction and Social Happiness, 23 

Not so Many Children, but Better Ones, 24 

Legal Intrusion has a Limit, 25 

Voluntary Complexity, and Health, 25 

Comparative Exemption of the dews, 27 

The Upward March, * 28 

Cruel and Irremediable Punishments, 28 

Origin of the Shame of Sex, 30 

Derived from Other-World Mania, 31 

“The Son of God” and Sex, 33 

Faithful Followers of desus, 34 

Relation of Past Asceticism to Existing Type, 36 

Mental Slaves are not Investigators, 37 

Romauld and Clarimonde, 38 

Sex Manifestation Below Our Race, 39 

Sex Inspiration in Human Endeavor, 40 

What is Immodesty? 41 

Primitive and Present-Day Savage Customs in Dress, 41 

Civilized Customs and Costumes, 43 

What We Affirm on This Subject, 44 

Bathing and Dress, , 4 45 

Asceticism and Honesty in Arjb, 45 

Arguments of the Puritahv 46 

dudge PHILLIPS and Mr. MOODY, 47 

To Take the Purity of Nudity in Art for Granted, 47 

Asceticism and Literature, 48 

Foolishness of Hiding Social Wrongs, 49 

Take off the Taboo, 50 



WHAT THE YOUNG NEED TO KNOW— A 
PRIMER OF SEX RATIONALISM 


BY EDWIN C. WALKER 


Q . — Do you think that the young “ need to know ” anything 
about sex and its manifestations? 

A . — I do. 

Q . — How much should they be taught? 

A . — All that they have the capacity to understand. 

Q . — By whom should they be taught? 

A . — By their parents, or other competent persons. 

Q . — At what age should they receive this instruction? 

A . — At as early an age as they, severally, appear to stand in 
need of it, and this is generally much earlier than most parents 
and teachers, even unprejudiced and intelligent men and women, 
seem to think. 

Q . — Is there not danger that, following this rule, the mind 
of the child may be too early led to think on the subject of sex, 
thus inducing a precocious and therefore unhealthful develop- 
ment? 

A. — Yes, just as there is grave danger to the mind and body 
of the child in the existing system of instruction as a whole. 
Our methods of education are very faulty, very dangerous. Men- 
tal and emotional development are hurried forward at a terrific 
pace ; the memory of the child is tremendously overtaxed ; its brain 
is loaded down with a great mass of detached facts which, often, 
it is utterly unable to put in order or to assimilate. In a word, 
the brain is given more work than it can perform. The result is 
nervous overstrain. The body hastens in its growth to reinforce 


6 WHAT THE YOUNG NEED TO KNOW— 


the centers of intellectual and nervous activity. So the sexual 
impulses are early aroused. This makes it imperatively necessary 
that we put the young on guard against the misdirection and abuse 
of their sexual forces. Ignorance is not the safeguard of inno- 
cence, but even if it were, the child will not remain ignorant. 
It will get some kind of instruction from its school- and play- 
mates, from nurses and stablemen, and from other older associates. 
The chances are that this instruction will be unscientific, and 
therefore misleading, and probably also vicious in that it will 
convey the impression that sex is something to conceal and of 
which to be ashamed. The prudent parent will endeavor to fore- 
stall all such education, which is miseducation. It is far better, 
therefore, to tell your child all about the sex organs, impulses, and 
feelings, and their effect upon the individual and the race; and 
this before he or she has become conscious of the existence of these 
organs as sex organs or has been stirred by these impulses and 
feelings. It is scarcely conceivable that you would give your child 
any tool or machine without first imparting some instruction as to 
its purpose and how to use it safely and effectively. Equally 
inconceivable is it that the rational parent will wait until the 
child has stumbled into the pitfalls of abuse or of sex-perversion 
before he says anything to it about those pitfalls and how to keep 
out of them. 

Q . — But is it not true that a great deal of instruction and 
warning is thrown away; that many men and women learn only 
in the hard school of experience, and that often children carefully 
taught concerning their sex-natures fare as unfortunately as do 
those who grow up in ignorance? 

A . — Of course; but such undeniable facts do not furnish a 
conclusive argument against rational instruction in sex matters. 
If they did, then we should be forced to tear down all our school 
houses and universities, burn our books, and destroy our printing 
plants, for it is indisputable that, in spite of all these educational 
facilities, multitudes of men and women who have had the oppor- 
tunity to share in the enlightenment thus shed abroad are still 
wrapped in the clouds of ignorance, having profited little if any 


A PRIMER OF SEX RATIONALISM 


7 


by their years of study and all their subsequent reading. The ob- 
jection amounts to this only: We are fallible; therefore the best 
system of education may utterly fail in some instances; but we 
still have reason to hold that education is better than ignorance, 
wisdom preferable to foolishness, and civilization more desirable 
than savagery. 

O. — Would you have instruction in regard to sex both nega- 
tive and affirmative — that is, while giving the child timely warn- 
ing of the dangers attending abuse and sex-perversions, would you 
also teach it how to use its sex organs to the best advantage to 
itself and others; would you give it detailed information as to the 
methods necessary to secure the greatest amount of healthful 
pleasure in love relations and the best results in offspring? 

A. — Assuredly; I have already said, in reply to your second 
question, that children should be taught all they have the capacity 
to understand, and I will add here, although it also is a repetition, 
in substance, of other affirmations previously made, that they should 
be taught all this at as early a period in their lives as they attain 
the capacity necessary to understand the instruction given. If you 
do not sow wheat some one else may sow tares. We want an 
all-around education. We want the children to profit by the ex- 
perience of the parents. We call ourselves the heirs of all the 
past, and in most departments of human thought and activity we 
profit by lessons learned by our remote ancestors. But when it 
comes to the relations, the most intensely delightful, the most 
momentous, relations of the sexes, we stumble ignorantly in dark- 
ness when we should walk intelligently upright in light. Each 
generation is forced to learn in sorrow what it should have re- 
ceived as a legacy of knowledge from the generations gone before. 
In all other fields of learning the child is kindly guided, and has 
recourse to the storehouse of the garnered wisdom of the ages. 
But in the field of sex it walks blindly alone and must pick up, 
bit by bit, out of the dirt of anti-naturalism, from amid the rocks 
and thorns of ignorance, the precious gems of truth, all stained 
with the blood of martyrdom. Why should not parents tell their 
children what they know of the relations of men and women? 


8 WHAT THE YOUNG NEED TO KNOW— 


Does not the mother teach her infant to walk, to talk, and later to 
read and to sew and cook? What would we say of the father, 
a farmer, who, instead of instructing his son in the use of modern 
agricultural implements and machines, should leave him in igno- 
rance, to again invent, perhaps, the primitive tools used thousands 
of years ago by his semi-civilized ancestors? The parallel is not 
perfect, of course, for the farmer’s son would naturally learn 
much of modern methods by observation, while as regards sex 
manifestation the average parent is precious careful that the child 
has no opportunity to profit by observation any more than by in- 
struction. We are most stupid in regard to those concerns that 
most vitally affect the well-being of ourselves and of our children. 
Are men and women to be forever slaves of sexual superstition? 
Are they to be ever imbeciles and cowards in the face of the sphinx 
of sex ? 

Q . — Doubtless you agree with other writers on the subject of 
sex, especially with the authors of the books we are not to “ lay on 
our center-tables ” — that is to say, you believe that the mother 
should instruct her daughters and the father should teach his sons 
what it is desirable they should know about their sex functions? 

A . — I maintain that that parent who is the better qualified 
to teach should give this instruction, regardless of sex. If both 
are qualified, let both teach, and, as a rule, the father is better as 
the instructor of his daughters, and the mother as the teacher of 
her sons. There should be sympathy between teachers and pupils, 
and there is usually more sympathy between mothers and sons and 
fathers and daughters than there is between mothers and daughters 
and fathers and sons. Understanding the origin and nature of 
sex, we can not fail to perceive that the alignment just indicated is 
the natural one. While on this subject, it may be interesting to 
call attention to another manifestation of sexual superstition. 
When women began to study medicine it was frequently urged in 
defense of the innovation that it was grossly indelicate, indecent, 
in fact, for women to be treated by men physicians, particularly 
in accouchement cases and when suffering from “ diseases peculiar 
to their sex.” It was strenuously insisted that women doctors 


A PRIMER OF SEX RATIONALISM 


9 


should attend women and men doctors should treat men. It is 
quite probable that the argument had its use in breaking down the 
barriers that kept women out of a useful occupation, but it is time 
for the silly superstition to die. Sex is a fact of which there is no 
occasion to be ashamed, and there is no reason worth serious con- 
sideration why men physicians should not attend women patients 
and women physicians care for men patients. On the contrary, 
there are good reasons why they should. There can be no doubt 
that, once superstition regarding sex is driven from the minds of 
people, women, will, as a rule, prefer to be cared for by men phy- 
sicians and nurses, and men, in most instances, will choose women 
doctors and nurses. The sexes complement each other in all ways, 
and there is scarcely any place where they can help each other more 
than in the sick chamber. Only our abject slavery to the gods of 
mock propriety keeps us from recognizing this fact. 

Q . — Having thus indicated the general principles upon which 
you would proceed to secure the best results in the sexual instruc- 
tion of the young, into what main divisions does your subject 
naturally fall on the present occasion? 

A . — Into two. First, I shall speak of the Origin of Sex, 
Forms of Sex, Uses of Sex, Limitation of the Number of Chil- 
dren, including under this sub-division the Differentiation of the 
Reproductive and Amative Functions, and the Trend of Evolu- 
tion. Also, Sexual Diseases. In the Second Division I shall speak 
of The Prevalence and Power of Sex, and of Clothing, Art, and 
Literature in their relation to the fact of Sex. 

Q . — Will the questions arranged by you be those the child 
would propound and the answers those the parent would give? 

A . — In substance, only; it is manifestly impracticable to write 
in the simple and plain manner that the child and its parent would 
talk. The inquisitive child will ask a thousand questions that can 
not be reproduced here, and the teacher must adapt his language 
to the infant’s comprehension, accompanying the words with such 
objective instruction as may be necessary. It would take too much 
space to go into details as the parent can, while the requisite plain- 
ness of expression is not possible in these pages, owing to the 


IO WHAT THE YOUNG NEED TO KNOW— 


misconceived statutes of the Lords of Misrule, to the superstition 
and stupidity of the masses who select, urge on, and support the 
Lords of Misrule. With freedom of press and mails the value of 
such a compend as this would be multiplied many times. 

I. 

Q . — What is sex? 

A . — “ The characteristic property by which an animal or vege- 
table is male or female.” (Worcester.) Or, the reproductive 
property or properties which an animal manifests. 

Q . — Is reproduction a form of growth? 

A. — Yes; when a cell becomes so large that the feeding sur- 
face is too small to supply the mass of the cell with nourishment, 
the surface must be enlarged or the cell stop growing. The cell 
splits into two parts; “this is called reproduction by fission [or 
scission]. Where the cells after such division remain attached to 
each other, so as to form a composite body, as in plants, the in- 
crease of the body is growth; but where cells, after division, sepa- 
rate from each other and each piece goes on growing up to the 
mature size of the parent cell, it is growth to be sure, but it is 
interrupted and disconnected growth, or as it is usually expressed, 
discontinuous growth. But it is also reproduction, for it repro- 
duces the parent cells and perpetuates the race.” (Alexander.) 

Q . — What is this kind of reproduction called? 

A. — Asexual; that is, without sex, or, more accurately, with- 
out specific organs of sex. 

Q . — What forms of life reproduce in this way? 

A . — “ The lower forms of vegetation reproduce asexually by 
detachable bulbs or bulbils, or by fission, as some algae, the liver- 
worts, many ferns, some grasses, etc. Animals which reproduce 
by budding, or gemmation, or by fission, are asexual.” (Alex- 
ander.) The tape worm is a common parasite that reproduces 
asexually. 

Q . — What follows asexual reproduction? 

A . — Sexual reproduction. “ There has been such a differenti- 
ation [division of work] that, while all the parts continue to 


A PRIMER OF SEX RATIONALISM 


ii 


grow by the asexual reproductive process of the cells of their own 
tissues, the possibility of reproducing all the tissues in a complete 
animal is not retained in every cell, but is transferred to certain 
specialized reproductive cells.” (Alexander.) The cells of one 
tissue can reproduce their own kind, but not the cells of another 
tissue. The reproductive cells themselves are subject to growth 
and division, like other cells. This is the asexual reproduction of 
these cells, considered merely as cells. The growth, both continu- 
ous and discontinuous, of the simplest animals, and of the simple 
tissues of the complex animals and plants, is asexual. But the 
reproduction of the body of the highly differentiated organisms 
is brought about sexually. 

O . — What is the condition of things under sexuality? 

A . — Differentiation has proceeded so far that the reproductive 
cells have been still further differentiated, so that now one-half 
of them have lost one part of the reproductive function, which has 
been taken on by the other half, which, in turn, has lost another 
part of the reproductive function, taken on by the first half. 

Q . — What is the result of this division of labor? 

A . — The general reproduction of the organism can not pro- 
ceed until two cells having these complemental fractions of func- 
tions can be brought together. 

Q . — Was this differentiation an abrupt or a gradual process? 

A . — Gradual. To quote a simple and direct description found 
in James B. Alexander's “Dynamic Theory of Life and Mind”: 
“ In those asexual animals which are only so far differentiated as 
to have the reproductive cells distinct from those producing tissues, 
the reproductive cells are usually to be found together in one place 
and developing in connection with a special gland. And when sex 
differentiation begins, both kinds of sex cells are at first found 
developing in the same gland. Then the two kinds are developed 
alternately; the one kind at one period in the life of the indi- 
vidual, and the other kind at another time from the same gland. 
Then there are two glands, one for the development and keeping 
of the female cells, or ova, and the other for the male cells, or 
spermatozoa. Both these glands are at first in one individual and 


i2 WHAT THE YOUNG NEED TO KNOW— 


near together; later they become separated in different parts 
of the same animal; and finally the female cells are found in 
one individual and the male cells in another. When both kinds 
are found in a single individual, it is called an hermaphrodite 
[in other words, it is £z-sexual] ; when an individual has but one 
kind it is wmsexual. Among both plants and animals are to be 
found these three conditions as regards reproduction; viz., asexual 
reproduction, hermaphroditism, unisexuality. Most plants that 
we ordinarily meet are hermaphrodites, but a considerable number 
are unisexual, one plant bearing the fertilizing pollen, and an- 
other, the ovules, which when fertilized grow into the seed. The 
lowest plants are asexual like most of the lowest animals.” 

Q . — Are hermaphrodite individuals self-impregnating? 

A . — Not as a rule, close observers declare. The chief reason 
is that the production of ova and spermatozoa does not take place 
simultaneously. Most bisexual animals live in the water; the 
spermatozoa and ova thrown off float about and drift to each 
other by accident, “ or the spermatozoa are thrown off by one and 
find their way to the ova in or from the female glands of another.” 
The pollen from hermaphrodite plants is carried about in the air 
or by insects and so finds its way “ to the ovules in distant plants 
which may be ready for it.” 

Q . — How does this manner of fertilization lead to the de- 
velopment of unisexual plants and animals? 

A . — “ In cases where the male elements happen to be furnished 
by an exceptionally vigorous individual, and fall upon female ele- 
ments of inferior vigor, or vice versa , the result must be organisms 
in which the equality of sex functions is disturbed, some individ- 
uals being more male than female, and vice versa. This sort of 
differentiation, carried to an extreme, results in the complete 
establishment of unisexuality in which one individual is the ex- 
clusive possessor of the male organs and another the female. Em- 
bryology proves that this is the process that has taken place.” 
(Alexander.) 

0. — What is the effect upon the strength and life of the parent 
of the differentiation of the sexual organs? 


A PRIMER OF SEX RATIONALISM 


13 


A .— It is to increase the chances of continued vigorous exist- 
ence. Many simple organisms, both animal and vegetable, end 
their own existence when they have matured and liberated the 
elements which form the next generation. Numerous insects 
perish a few hours after the female has liberated the ova, “ the 
exhaustion of reproduction being fatal to both female and male ” 
The more the rest of the body is differentiated from the reproduc- 
tive cells, the less injuriously is it affected by the liberation of 
such cells. In the annelid Polygordius “ the mature females break 
up and die in liberating their ova. This is approached but sug- 
gestively avoided in a genus of capitellid sea-worms (Clitomas- 
tus). The whole organism is not sacrificed, but only an abdomi- 
nal portion of the body. This is, in fact, one of the key-notes to 
reproductive differentiation — the sacrifice is lessened and the fatal- 
ity warded off.” (Geddes and Thomson.) By the time man is 
reached the differentiation has proceeded so far that the liberation 
of reproductive cells, in the case of both male and female, not only 
is not injurious but is positively necessary to the continued health 
of the organism as a whole. When the reproductive cell was all 
there was of the organism its breaking up into two meant, of 
course, the death of the old and the substitution therefor of the 
two new organisms. But as the organism became more and more 
complex, as the functions of life were more and more divided 
among different organs, the less was the organism injured by the 
formation of new organisms from germs contributed by the old, 
or by the throwing off of the reproductive cells without the crea- 
tion of new lives. Evolution has proceeded very far since the 
advent of the child or of the children carried with it the dissolu- 
tion of the parent or of the parents. So far has it proceeded that 
it is now recognized by the most competent students of biology 
that the human female, as a rule, will have better health if she is 
the mother of a fair number of children than she will if she re- 
main without offspring, while the conviction that frequent liber- 
ation of the ova and the spermatozoa is essential to the healthful 
working of the whole organism of the adult is strongest in the 
minds of those who have most fully familiarized themselves with 


14 WHAT THE YOUNG NEED TO KNOW— 


the evolution of sex. In fact, for a long period of years automatic 
nature itself forces this liberation periodically in the case of the 
female, except during lactation, and there is not lacking evidence 
to prove that too long-continued lactation is injurious. The liber- 
ation is also forced in the case of the male, but for various reasons 
the fact is not so obvious, especially as it lacks, more or less, the 
element of periodicity. However, this may be a lacking only in 
seeming, to the eye and thought of the careless. Careful obser- 
vation, by conscientious scientific students, in this long tabooed 
field, is quite likely to show that there is a regularity of expres- 
sive activity not hitherto recognized. Dr. Havelock Ellis is one 
of the pioneers in this line of investigation. We reach the conclu- 
sion, compelled thereto by unprejudiced reflection reinforced by 
experience, that this liberation should be as nearly mutual as pos- 
sible, in both time and degree, and that it will not, normally, be 
limited in time to the few days indicated. As highly differentiated 
unisexual animals, having complex and intense nervous systems, 
men and women complement each other in so many ways that the 
first and most important rule of living is the avoidance of solitari- 
ness in the liberation of reproductive cells. An essential corollary 
of this is that the sexes should be separated as little as possible at 
any time. 

Q . — What is the least that can be said concerning the exercise 
of the various parts of the body? 

A . — That exercise is necessary to health. The best-balanced 
organism is that in which the various parts all receive their needed 
exercise, in the most harmonious ratio. Activity and rest must 
alternate. If we have hard work for the muscles of the arm only 
one day in the year we must keep these muscles in a condition for 
doing good work when the time comes. This may be accomplished 
by engaging in pleasurable sports, in calisthenic drills, and in other 
exercises useful both because they keep the muscles ready for the 
prosaically hard labor that awaits them and because they are pleas- 
urable. Use, not disuse, strengthens any part of our bodies. The 
brain of the thinker gathers power in activity, not in idleness. 
Proper rest does not imply rusting. Neither are years of rusting 


A PRIMER OF SEX RATIONALISM 


15 


years of strength-gathering. The suppression of faculties, either 
under the pressure of necessity or through obedience to a theory, 
disturbs the balance of the organism. The organism will yield in 
its weakest place, and nothing could be more unscientific than 
the assumption that the weakness of one part gives strength to the 
whole. The proposition is self-evidently untrue. The nervous 
miseries of women demonstrate the evil effects of suppression, 
for, as compared with man’s, woman’s is the sex that has made 
a fetish of the alleged duty of suppression. When rationalism 
shall have brought her back to her normal self and she has become, 
as a sex, as imperative in her demands as is man, as a sex — as are 
many women, to-day — she will have rid herself of most of the 
ailments and weaknesses “ peculiar to her sex,” and will be able 
to stand by her brother’s side in conscious dignity and power, 
capable of enjoying this life as only persons in all-around good 
health can enjoy existence. 

Q . — Are we to infer from your answer to the question prece- 
ding the last that it is desirable that the sexes assume the relation 
of lovers at a time when woman is commonly supposed to be 
incapacitated by reason of periodical sexual activity? 

A. — Yes, assuredly; the question answers itself. The organ- 
ism has unmistakably indicated what it requires. No less now 
than at other times are its commands to be obeyed. Hunger can be 
satisfactorily appeased in but one way. When we are cramped by 
sitting we get up and walk. When we are hungry we eat. When 
we are sleepy we sleep. Or, we do so when we have good sense, 
circumstances permitting. Necessarily, it scarcely needs to be said, 
the inevitable exceptions and degrees are to be noted, considered, 
and respected, for no blanket rule can be applied to all persons of 
one class or under similar conditions. And the woman is, right- 
fully, the deciding authority in all cases. 

Q . — Are we to understand that play is “ useful ” only in so 
far as the muscles and organs it employs are thereby kept in a state 
of preparation for “ necessary ” work? 

A. — No: Play is useful in itself; joy is positive, not negative. 
Pleasures that make us better satisfied with our fellows and less 


16 WHAT THE YOUNG NEED TO KNOW— 


disposed to invade the spheres of our associates, are always to 
be welcomed. Happiness has a direct effect upon the whole 
man or woman, and the. effect is good, physically, intellectually, 
emotionally. It is the unsatisfied, unhappy man who is a torment 
to his neighbors. He is of use, of course, in helping the race 
advance to a better state,, but the better state is preferable to the 
one it succeeds only because the chances of unhappiness in it 
are fewer. Freedom of life for the two sexes, the differentiation 
of the amative from the reproductive association, are destined to 
augment immensely the sum total of human happiness. 

Q . — Why are the badly-mated man and woman not desirable 
elements in any community? 

A . — Because they are not happy. Not being happy, they are 
likely to quarrel with each other, and, if they have children, to 
set them such an example of peevishness and hatred as to per- 
manently sully the children’s characters and thus handicap them 
fatally in the race of life. Unhappy persons are a source of 
disquiet to all with whom they come into close relations. Un- 
happy parents can not dower their offspring with those traits of 
disposition and that physical vigor and symmetry which would 
enable them to make the best use of their opportunities and 
contribute, in their turn, to the happiness of others. The sexually 
unfed man or woman is to that extent an undesirable factor in 
the community for the same reason that the pecuniary pauper is, 
or the deformed or the diseased person; neither of these is a full 
man or woman, and each helps lower the average of human 
pleasure, reducing the sum total of joys that should be ours and 
would be ours were we free from the dominion of the super- 
stitions that buttress the most cruel and disastrous forms of 
spoliation and tyranny. 

Q . — Is it true that the desire for pleasurable sensations is 
the cause of progress? 

A . — Of course. Every fact of sentience, through all the 
gradations of organization, from the most simple to the most 
complex, demonstrates this truth. Growth is accretion through 
attraction; attraction draws together complementary atoms; the 


A PRIMER OF SEX RATIONALISM 


17 


joining of complements produces harmony, and harmony yields 
the sensations of pleasure. The fear of pleasure is the fruit 
of ignorance. All men want to be happy; they could not want 
to be anything else. But, for the most part, they do not know 
how to secure happiness. Nearly all have thought that the most 
happiness would come to them in some other world and that 
the best way to attain this future bliss was to be as miserable as 
they could be in this world. Hence the doctrine of self-sacrifice. 
Priests and kings and land-lords and money-lords, fattening in 
idleness while the millons wasted away in toil, always have 
extolled the beauties of renunciation, have preached against the 
“ seductions of pleasure,” the wickedness of “ carnal delights.” 
And the starving millions — poor fools — have generally swallowed 
the lie, too blind to see that their exploiters and tyrants failed to 
take their own medicine. Self-sacrifice is the antithesis of self- 
development. Self-sacrifice means decay and death; self-develop- 
ment means growth and life. The first is perversion, degenera- 
tion ; the second is progression, generation, regeneration. Sick 
minds and sick bodies are not so helpful as well minds and well 
bodies. It is strange that at this late day it should be necessary 
to reiterate this truism. It is not a good thing to lack food for 
the stomach, the sex nature, the brain, the emotions, the aesthetic 
faculties. Waste is reduction of power, the diminution of pleas- 
ure. We must have plenty of nourishing food, and in such variety 
as is called for by the organs of assimilation, which represent the 
whole organism. 

Q . — Returning to the particular subject of sex association, 
What is to be the rule of action, as you interpret the indications 
given by nature? 

A . — The mutual desire of the two individuals who associate. 
One man can not decide for another nor one woman for another. 
No majority of men or of women or of men and women can de- 
cide for any minority. Differentiation is the road along which 
life marches; the forcible suppression of untried variations is al- 
ways fraught with danger to the race, as it is likewise always an 
invasion of the individual. As I have previously said, evolution 


18 WHAT THE YOUNG NEED TO KNOW— 


has already differentiated the amative from the reproductive func- 
tion. If we loved only when we desired to propagate and when 
we intended to propagate, one would love not more than an hour 
or so in the course of his whole life. If he expressed his love only 
when he intended to originate a new life he would express it not 
more than three or four times between puberty and death. As a 
matter of fact, however, the healthy man and woman desire to 
express their love thus thousands of times, and in many other ways, 
in the course of a long life. The censorship under which the stu- 
pidity of the masses permits the supernaturalist moralists to keep 
us renders it impossible to write and print and disseminate what 
should be written and printed and disseminated. The most that 
can be said here and now is that sexual attraction will be mani- 
fested differently by different individuals, by the same individuals 
at different times, and in both monogamic and varietist relations, 
even by the same individuals, in different periods of life. A very 
few virile persons may, perhaps, long abstain from association of 
one kind except when children are desired, but the overwhelming 
majority will find it imperatively necessary to express themselves 
fully quite frequently, and in varietist associations. If they do not 
do this, there will continue to be, as there is now, the involuntary 
or unsocial liberation of reproductive cells and nervous force which 
is the worst immediate result of attempted ascetic living. Concrete 
nature is stronger than theory, in the long run. The trend of 
evolution is toward wider and wider and more and more full ex- 
pression of emotion. As we conquer the forces of the universe to 
our use, as we lengthen life by progressively limiting the number 
and intensity of diseases, and as we round out our natures by the 
development of the intellectual and aesthetic faculties, so we in- 
crease our capacity to enjoy pleasurable sensations, and therefore 
we shall ever strive to increase the number and prolificness of the 
sources of pleasurable sensation. This is why no theory of sexual 
denial long can be accepted, much less acted upon, by any consider- 
able number of rational persons, who have good health. 

Q . — “As man develops his attractions become more precise, 
and, where on the animal plane, his attraction was promiscuous, 


A PRIMER OF SEX RATIONALISM 


19 


on the perfected human plane a few only, and ultimately but one 
will attract and hold him sexually.” Is this statement probably 
true? 

A . — It is based upon a very one-sided study of the problem 
of sex attraction and repulsion. In the first place, touching the 
phraseology employed, we can not draw any sharp line between 
the “ animal ” plane and the “ human plane,” while as to a “ per- 
fected human plane,” the words are unmeaning because perfection 
is unthinkable as regards finite beings. We might justifiably speak 
of an improved human plane if we were always careful to have it 
understood that “ human ” was not used in contradistinction to 
“ animal,” but w T as employed to indicate an animal more highly 
differentiated than the others. Again, it is not true that the 
attractions of animals of the lower orders are entirely promiscuous 
or varietist; some are monogamic, and more are partially mono- 
gamic, that is, some animals and birds go in pairs for one breeding 
season. So we perceive that no more here than elsewhere can we 
set the lower organisms on one side of a clearly-defined line and 
the more complex organism, man, on the other side. 

Now as to the contention itself: It is true that as civilization 
advances men and women gro\v more particular in their attrac- 
tions; in other words, something more than the mere difference 
of sex is required to draw them to one another. In still other 
words, a man of culture does not care for association sexually with 
all women, and a woman does not care for association sexually with 
all men. It may be said in passing that probably it has been a 
great many thousands of years since men and women began to have 
their preferences as to sex mates ; that is to say, here and there a man 
or woman very early learned that some one of the opposite sex was 
more attractive than the others of that sex; differentiation was 
already doing its work in the mental and aesthetic domains of 
human life — there had ceased to be promiscuity for at least a few 
of the genus homo. And man was not the pioneer in sexual selec- 
tion, as could easily be shown, if it were necessary. But the two 
fundamental errors of the objector are the making of promiscuity 
synonymous with variety (multi-selection), and the assumption 


20 WHAT THE YOUNG NEED TO KNOW— 


that increasing precision in selection will not be accompanied by- 
increasing frequency of attractive attributes. Each of the errors 
is a glaring one. Promiscuity signifies without selection, while 
the varietist is of all men or women the most particular as to the 
qualities of the one loved, or the ones loved. The varietist re- 
quires the best for which his or her nature calls, and all of the 
best. The varietist is not satisfied to be chained for life to any one 
person, for there is not to be found in any one person the comple- 
ment of all the qualities of one’s self. The monogamist selects 
once, in a blind, hap-hazard way; the varietist continues to select 
all through life. The monogamist makes no allowance for changes 
of character in himself or his companion, for differences in de- 
velopment as the years pass, nor for the equilibration of attractions 
that is bound to come to every couple depending upon each other 
alone for magnetization and close mental and aesthetic companion- 
ship. In a word, the monogamist is promiscuous in his sexual re- 
lations, as he is not free to select from different persons what his 
nature requires. Opposed to him stands the varietist always select- 
ing, under liberty, what his nature demands. If the laws, and the 
bad organization of society, deny the liberty essential to selection, 
the varietist does the best he can under the circumstances. 

As to the second fundamental error of the critic, it is self- 
evident that he stopped his cogitations prematurely. It needs no 
argument to prove that, as men and women grow more particular 
as regards the qualities demanded in those they can love, so must 
there be a corresponding increase of the qualities in themselves 
which can be loved by men and women of equal mental power 
and equal refinement. The more there is asked for the more can 
be given. So demand and supply will keep pace with each other. 
As neither human perfection nor uniformity is supposable, the 
rationalist can not imagine a time to be coming in which a man 
will find in one woman all that he needs of the opposite sex, or a 
woman find in one man all that she needs. 

Q . — Is it probable that where there is a strong sexual attrac- 
tion a man and woman will be benefited as much by caresses and 
endearments which stop short of the full union of the two as they 


A PRIMER OF SEX RATIONALISM 


21 


would be by the completion of the association? Is it not possible 
that, on the contrary, they may be injured by such partial ex- 
change ? 

— Where there is anything approaching a strong attraction 
sexually it is unwise to the verge of recklessness to permit any de- 
gree of intimacy unless it is intended to allow the attraction full 
play, with the consequent and imperatively necessary relaxation 
and rest, generally accompanied by somnolence, which follow natu- 
ral association. Any partial caresses, under such circumstances, 
must result in a nervous shock that can not fail to be injurious. 
This does not carry the implication that the liberation of repro- 
ductive cells is demanded in each instance, for there may be 
strengthening interchange without, but liberation must not be too 
long deferred. Self-control is a great enhancer of power and 
almost infinitely increases the capacity for happiness, but this self- 
control will be lost if nature is defied instead of being guided. 

For those who have weak attractive powers, whether the weak- 
ness is due to advancing years or to any other cause, there is no 
doubt that beneficial results will be secured without the complete 
association that to other and more fortunate individuals, men and 
women, is so necessary. Each must decide for him- or herself. 
Happiness is individual, not collective. It is only a convenient 
figure of speech to say that a nation is happy or prosperous. What 
is meant is that the individuals occupying a given territory are 
happy or prosperous. So to be happy in sex relations, “ the peo- 
ple ” must be happy individually, and to be happy individually it 
is essential that each be free to follow what is for him or her the 
line of least resistance. What is a moral or physiological “ ought ” 
for one is not for another who is organized differently or differ- 
ently environed. 

Q . — It is claimed by some vegetarians and advocates of absti- 
nence from alcoholic liquors and tobacco that if we quit eating 
meat, drinking intoxicants, and using narcotics we shall in time 
cease to desire sexual association except for procreative purposes. 
What has sex rationalism to offer here? What is the basis of the 
theory ? 


22 WHAT THE YOUNG NEED TO KNOW— 


A . — The basis of this theory is — theory. Most persons have 
a weakness for generalizing from here and there an isolated fact. 
They direct their gaze to one point and then jump to a conclusion 
for the whole world. If eschewing a meat diet will improve the 
general health of men and women, then their sexual nature must 
share in the benefit. If abstinence from intoxicants and narco- 
tics is beneficial to man as an organism, it follows that the parts 
of the organism will be strengthened by that abstinence. What- 
ever tends to build up the body can not weaken a part of the body. 
For instance: I take a cold bath; I feel better at once. That is, 
as a whole, there is a change for the better in the organism. This 
is the result that living on food other than meat and abstinence 
from intoxicating liquors is supposed to produce. If the theory 
I am examining is sound, and if bathing is beneficial to the whole 
man, then after I bathe there should be a diminution of the de- 
mand for sex association. But the very reverse is the fact. Just 
as my brain works more harmoniously and expeditiously after a 
bath, so do all the other parts of the machinery. There is no ex- 
ception to this, in my case. And others give the same testimony. 
Both experience and observation lead us to expect that the more 
healthful the food we take into our stomachs the stronger we 
shall be sexually, as well as otherwise. This increase in the 
healthfulness of our diet at once gives us greater power of control 
and greater capacity as well as desire for enjoyment. And this is 
because the whole organism is provided with an augmented reserve 
of strength. 

In another view of the claim, we have to take into consider- 
ation many facts wholly lost sight of by the theorists. Note how 
prolific is the Irish peasantry, and the peasantry of many other 
countries, and the poor classes generally in the old world, as com- 
pared with the wealthy castes, and yet the poor people eat very 
little meat, relatively to the amount consumed by the rich. Rome 
conquered and raped the world with soldiers fed chiefly on parched 
grains. The Japanese has ever been one of the most warlike of 
people, but it remains to this day a very small consumer of flesh 
food. Going among the lower animals, we discover that a vege- 


A PRIMER OF SEX RATIONALISM 


23 


tarian diet does not always cool the blood. The amorous nature 
of the goat has made its name a synonym of lust, and yet the goat 
is not a meat-eater, nor does it drink wine and whiskey. The 
rabbit is another herbivorous animal, and one of the most prolific. 
So are many others of the non-meat eaters, while some of the car- 
nivora breed very slowly. 

Neither is it true that the man under the influence of intoxi- 
cants is always, or even in the majority of instances, ready to 
impose himself upon his wife or other women. Often the effects 
of alcohol upon him are such that he is for the time being incapa- 
citated for sexual action. We are informed on good authority that 
the absinthe drinkers become in time dead to sexual feeling, and 
upon the whole, the abstainer seems to be capable of more intense 
and longer-continued enjoyment than does the user of strong 
liquors. While it is no doubt true that often the flagging energies 
of the sexually dissipated are stirred into temporary renewal of 
activity by stimulants, yet the final result is disastrous to the man 
or woman so spurring the jaded system. Reaction equals action, 
plus the friction, and so in the end the user of strong drinks is 
paralyzed rather than stimulated by the liquid whip applied to the 
rebellious flesh. In this view of the case we perceive how fallacious 
is the argument that temperance will reduce the sum total of sexual 
activity. 

As to the assumption that the time is likely ever to come under 
any regimen when we shall desire sex association for the purpose of 
procreation, but shall not otherwise desire it, nothing could be 
more preposterous. We might just as well say that we shall at 
some time be hungry only when we want to build up a certain 
part of the body, that we shall not be hungry except for the attain- 
ment of this end. In other words, we shall be able consciously to 
control and direct the primary appetites of the organism. The 
Will will supersede attraction and repulsion. We shall be able 
to desire association only a very few times during life, but shall 
then so intensely desire it that we can call the atrophied organs into 
transient activity and give existence to strong and symmetrical chil- 
dren. That is the theory. Referring to the facts, this brief sum- 


24 WHAT THE YOUNG NEED TO KNOW— 


mary outlines the situation: So long as we retain the ability at 
any time to assist in the perpetuation of the species, we shall feel 
amative desire. While we feel that desire, we deny its full satis- 
faction at our peril. If the theorist contends that sexual attraction 
is the demand for children, and for nothing else, then I answer: 
Very well; act as you argue; obey “nature’s command” and have 
a child once a year or oftener while the child-bearing period lasts. 
If it is “wrong” to associate for pleasure at the call of attraction, 
then it is equally wrong not to associate for procreation when 
“nature” orders you, by her messenger attraction, to have a child. 

Q . — Is it desirable to have children come in such rapid 
succession ? 

A. — No; there is no necessity for wearing out the mother in 
that cruel way. A few children, and the best possible under the 
prevailing conditions, are what we need. It is not desirable that 
the race increase in numbers very rapidly. So improve the blood 
and the environment that the largest possible percentage of the 
children born survive to and through manhood and womanhood, 
and we have done the most that can be done to reform the world. 
Let the population increase slowly, so slowly that the men and 
women who live in the world will have clear heads and free hands 
for the thinking and the work that has to be done to remove 
the despots, destroy the monopolies, and drive out the superstitions 
that enthrall, rob, and debase humanity. Bad social conditions 
necessarily react upon the individual to his injury, but, on the other 
hand, bad social conditions require intelligent men and women for 
their elimination, and no “submerged tenth” has either the wisdom 
or the vitality necessary for the permanent reform of society. 

Q . — How shall population be kept within the proper limits, 
supposing that the mothers are to be preserved from early exhaus- 
tion and to have the leisure and opportunity they need for culture 
and enjoyment? 

A . — The people will learn how to prevent conception, and 
every woman who so wishes will have at hand the means whereby 
she can make her knowledge effective. 

Q . — But how is this condition of intelligence and independence 


A PRIMER OF SEX RATIONALISM 


25 


to be reached, with the state and national governments united in 
a conspiracy to perpetuate the unfit and force unwilling mother- 
hood upon the women of the country? 

d . — There are some things that the strongest government can 
not accomplish. It has been tersely said that an entire people can 
not be indicted, and the hour is hastening when all the people of 
this country will know how to prevent conception. Once any 
large number of mothers begin to teach their daughters this vitally 
necessary science and art, the moralistic movement in favor of de- 
generacy will break itself into pieces against a stone-wall of popular 
practical disfavor. The people everywhere are asking about this 
matter; they have discovered that the prevention of conception is 
possible, and very many of them are testing some one or more of 
the methods now in vogue. What they want is the best method; 
while it is likely that moral and official stupidity will for some 
time to come balk their efforts to get it, the end is certain defeat 
for the champions of ignorance and legal outrage. The opponents 
of light long may continue to keep the mails locked and the express- 
car doors closed against the information the people are seeking, and 
they may put the freight carriers under surveillance of Com- 
stock, but they still are foredoomed to overthrow. The people are 
already passing this information from mouth to ear and the means 
of prevention from hand to hand. The first thing the opponents 
of knowledge will discover on awakening will be that the masses 
have in some way learned what it had been determined they should 
not learn. The restrictive laws will fall into desuetude, as have 
so many millions of other enactments intended to stay the sun of 
science in its course. The instruction I can not impart here or 
through correspondence will then be given to every boy and girl, 
and solitary injurious habits will be reduced to a minimum, in ex- 
tent and volume. Exchange will take the place of nervous waste. 
There will be less distrust, less hate, less misery, fewer wrecks; 
there will be more confidence, more love, more joy, more well- 
rounded men and women ; this will be a better world because a 
happier one. 

Q . — Is not sexual disease due to varietist relations? 


26 WHAT THE YOUNG NEED TO KNOW— 


A . — Probably there never was a more stupid superstition than 
the one just indicated. Of course varietist relations disseminate 
the contagious diseases, just as general social intercourse dissemi- 
nates the cholera, the bubonic plague, consumption, and all other 
diseases that spread through communities and from neighborhood 
to neighborhood. But are we proposing to destroy the present 
social arrangements and scatter men and women as hermits over 
the world so as to escape the ravages of infectious and contagious 
diseases? Such a “remedy” would be utterly impracticable, but 
no more impracticable than an attempt to stamp out sexual diseases 
by the enforcement of the monogamic ideal. Syphilis, introduced, 
probably, by the returning sailors of Columbus into Europe dur- 
ing the closing years of the fifteenth century, spread with remark- 
able swiftness through all classes of society, lay and ecclesiastical. 
This fact shows how prevalent were illegal relations in Europe, 
and yet they had not resulted in the local development of the dis- 
ease, uncleanly as were the personal habits of the people. From 
that time to this the terrible poison of syphilis has been coursing 
through the veins of the European peoples, disseminated by both 
contact _ and hereditary transmission. Whether in the first in- 
stance it was a filth disease, originating in the tropical or semi- 
tropical regions, or whether it owes its existence to a specific poison 
introduced into the system, like the virus of rabies, it is certain that 
filth has been largely responsible for its continued ravages through- 
out the world. The danger of contagion is always greatly aggra- 
vated by the carelessness of the victims and their poisoners. The 
prostitute class, recruited chiefly from the ranks of the very poor, 
whose women are so frequently compelled to choose between star- 
vation and degradation, lacks the knowledge necessary to enable 
its members to observe the most simple sanitary precautions, while 
the heartless persecution of these unfortunates still further lessens 
their ability to take proper care of their persons. As an illustration 
of the evil effects of persecution, take the experience of Berlin in 
the Forties. Dr. Fr. J. Behrend, in his “ Die Prostitution in 
Berlin,” points out that during the period of the suppression of the 
brothels (1845 to 1848, inclusive), the number of cases of syphilis 


A PRIMER OF SEX RATIONALISM 


27 


treated at Der Charite was trebled, while the disease invaded the 
best families. Dr. Parkhurst and other present-day crusaders 
would do well carefully to study the history of the Berlin experi- 
ment. Then, again, the poverty of the great majority of prosti- 
tutes compels them to accept men they know to be diseased. So the 
disease continues to spread, and will continue to spread while so- 
cial and economic conditions remain as they are. With women 
industrially independent and both men and women intelligent 
enough to avoid danger of contagion, partly by keeping clean and 
partly by refusing to associate with the infected, the scourge would 
in time be conquered. 

Q . — What civilized people has suffered the least from syphilis, 
and what are the causes of its comparative exemption? 

A . — The Jewish people. One cause of exemption is circum- 
cision. It lessens the danger of long retention of the poison received 
through contact. Another cause is the greater solidarity of the 
Jews. This cause operates through the wide-reaching system of 
mutual help which exempts their women from the necessity of 
adopting prostitution as a means of livelihood. 

Q . — But there are other sexual diseases — what of them, from 
the viewpoint of social freedom? 

A . — The milder sexual diseases probably are filth-diseases in 
their origin ; certainly they have been perpetuated by contact with 
the contaminated and by unclean habits. There is not a scrap of 
evidence which goes to show that variety in love relations will of 
itself give birth to any sexual disease. Keep clean, keep away from 
those already diseased, and you are safe. And here social freedom 
comes in to play a most important part in the physical regeneration 
of the race. Give the young opportunity for the association which 
their natures imperatively demand ; let it be understood that men 
and women of all ages may freely and without shame enjoy the 
affections of one or many as attraction leads, and the way is open 
for the return of the Prodigal Daughter and of the Prodigal Son. 
Women will not then be driven by shame into the ranks of the 
courtesans; women will not then go there because of the unsatisfied 
demands of their natures; men will not then buy sorrow and pain 


28 WHAT THE YOUNG NEED TO KNOW— 


and death of prostitutes and from them carry all these into their 
homes and the homes of other men. Give to labor its earnings and 
to love its liberty and Humanity is on the Open Road to an earthly 
future glorious beyond the dreams of all the heroes and poets of all 
the centuries. 

Upward, upward press the peoples to that pure, exalted plane, 

Where no throne shall cast a shadow and no slave shall wear a chain. 
* * * ****** 

Then, despite the fangs of Custom and despite the Church’s frown, 

Womanhood shall wield its scepter, womanhood shall wear its crown. 

She hath borne with man his crosses, she hath worn with man his 
chains ; 

She hath suffered all his losses, she hath suffered all his pains — 

She shall stand with him, co-equal, on the pure, exalted planes ! 

— Will H. Kernan. 

Q . — For the protection of women against undesired relations, 
is it neccessary, expedient, or just to resort to cruel, irremediable 
punishments? 

A. — No; under social freedom the outraging of women will 
practically disappear. With voluntary associations recognized as 
the only honorable associations, and the consequent discouragement 
and elimination of law-sanctioned and law-protected invasion, the 
number of men who will not respect the initiative of women, will 
be very small. The proposal of certain statute-carpenters and 
pseudo sociologists to emasculate ravishers is a proposal to return 
to savagery. The objections to the scheme are many and weighty. 
In fact, no argument worth anything can be advanced in its favor. 
It is said by its advocates that “the punishment should be made to 
fit the crime.” But it does not fit the crime. Rarely is the crime 
irremediable in its effects, while the vengeance we are urged to take 
is irremediable. Mutilation and the death penalty are alike re- 
pugnant to the sense of enlightened justice. If a man is convicted 
on false testimony and killed or mutilated, there is no redress for 
him, no hope for him, if the truth comes out later. And we know 
that many men have been convicted on false testimony. The charge 


A PRIMER OF SEX RATIONALISM 


29 


of outrage is one very easy to make, and one very hard to disprove, 
in many cases where there is not a word of truth in the accusation. 
Disappointed love or passion, malice, envy, hate, or avarice may 
inspire a woman to make a charge against a man that brings down 
upon him the indignation of all his fellows, even of the husbands 
who outrage their wives every night. Not a week passes that there 
does not somewhere occur an event of this kind. With imprison- 
ment as the penalty for crime there is always, while the convicted 
man lives, hope for him if he was sent to prison on perjured tes- 
timony. But death closes the door against hope, and so does muti- 
lation. 

If the punishment should be made to “ fit the crime ” by the 
amputation of the offending member, why should not the hand of 
the pickpocket be severed from his arm? And the defaulter or 
the bank-wrecker, who alters the books and whose cunning forgeries 
carry misery into a hundred or a thousand homes, thus causing 
more suffering than scores of ravishments — why should not the in- 
strument of his misdeeds be taken from him? And then there is 
the woman who falsely accuses a man of having outraged her and 
so ruins his life ; why should not the punishment be “ made to fit 
the crime,” as “Liberty” suggests, by the cutting out of her tongue? 
Assuredly, there was more malice in her use of her tongue than 
there would have been in the act of the man had her story been true. 

“Punishment” is an unscientific term, and no sociologist worthy' 
of the name will advocate “punishment” for social offenders. All 
that we can wisely do is to protect ourselves in such ways only as 
will tend in the least measure to perpetuate the anti-social character- 
istics of the human animal. Cruel punishments, legal or extra- 
legal, invariably defeat the end sought. It is so in the case of rape 
where the penalty is death, life imprisonment, or a term of imprison- 
ment which virtually amounts to life imprisonment. As a rule, 
where the law is the most severe, there is the greatest proportionate 
number of outrages. And to the crime of rape is added the crime 
of murder, very often, for the invader is determined to leave no 
witness behind to send him to the gallows, or to life incarceration. 
The same phenomenon was observed when the law punished simple 


30 WHAT THE YOUNG NEED TO KNOW— 


theft with death. Again: Should emasculation be made the pen- 
alty for outrage, we may be certain that juries will be far less likely 
to convict than they do now, just as murderers are often turned 
loose because the juries hesitate to send men to the judicial sham- 
bles. Then the mob cries for vengeance and Judge Lynch executes 
the barbarous law with all the added cruelties that the mad im- 
pulses of emotional and alcoholic intoxication can devise. The mob 
kills or mutilates — the same thing in effect — and then tries, if it 
tries at all. 

Really, the emasculation propagandists have their eyes on the 
“purity” standard rather than on the scales of justice. They are 
fighting for a high age-of-consent, in many States, and they want 
to visit the most fearful vengeance upon the male violaters of their 
absurd statutes, no matter how willing the young women concerned 
were to enter into the association that the age-of-consent enact- 
ments brand as rape. We know what are the forces that underlie 
this movement toward Spanish judicial methods, the methods of 
savage torture. Already some of the less cautious emasculation 
propagandists have placed themselves on record in favor of the same 
cruel penalty for “adulterers” and the “seducers” of mature women. 
Aiming ostensibly at the ordinary ravisher (outside of legal mar- 
riage), the “purity” champions of emasculation intend to ultimately 
bring down the practical sex rationalist. Of course they are op- 
posed to non-legal invasion, but non-conformity is at least equally 
repugnant to them. Many of them hate it worse. Their attitude 
toward the Mormons proves this conclusively. 

II. 

Q . — What is the cause of the shame of sex which is so gener- 
ally felt by Christians and by others who have come under the in- 
fluence of the Christian religion, or of related religions? 

A. — Other-worldliness; the shame of sex is the survival of that 
all-inclusive shame and distrust of all things earthly which were the 
central dogmas of the Buddhist ascetics, of the Essenian ascetics, 
and later of their descendants and heirs, the Christian ascetics. 


A PRIMER OF SEX RATIONALISM 


3i 


Jesus taught that this world is the kingdom of Satan, and because 
of their allegiance to the “prince of this world” the inhabitants of 
the earth hated and rejected the “ son of God.” Says Hittell 
(“History of the Mental Growth of Mankind in Ancient Times,” 
IV., 312), quoting from Matthew, Luke, and John: “As the 
world does not love righteousness, so no righteous person can love 
the world. ‘If,’ says Jesus, ‘any man. . .hate not... his own 
life ... he can not be my disciple ’ ; and again he said, ‘ He that loveth 
his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world, shall 
keep it unto life eternal.’ On another occasion he told his hearers 
that ‘ if any man will come after me, let him deny himself,’ 

‘ Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 
Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed 
are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.’ ‘ Blessed are ye 
when men shall hate you, . . . for behold your reward is great in 
heaven.’ ‘ Woe unto you that laugh now, for ye shall mourn and 
weep.’ According to the New Testament, this life is a mere ante- 
chamber of another to come hereafter. It is brief, and the other is 
eternal. It is a place of probation and the other of fruition. It is 
base, and for the saints the other is glorious. The chief duty of 
man on earth is to qualify himself for heaven by acquiring righteous- 
ness, which includes faith, acceptance of baptism, obedience to 
Christian priests, and the observance of the ascetic rules laid down 
by Jesus.” 

Massillon, the eminent French Jesuit, logically amplifies his 
master’s doctrines in this way (III., 6) : “Whether we consider 
worldly prosperity by the impression which it makes on the heart 
to corrupt it, or by the facilities which it offers for the gratification 
of the passions, when the heart is already corrupt, we must admit 
that salvation is so difficult in this condition of felicity and abun- 
dance that the righteous man should regard worldly prosperity as 
a present which God usually gives to men who are to be the victims 
of his wrath. ... A Christian soul should live as a stranger on this 
earth; his origin, as Tertullian says, his home, his hope, his no- 
bility, his crown, are in heaven ; and his heart ought to be where his 
treasure is. If it ceases for one moment to sigh for its country, it 


32 WHAT THE YOUNG NEED TO KNOW— 


ceases to belong to the future age and to the church of the first- 
begotten; if it takes pleasure in its exile, it is no longer worthy of 
its inheritance. Its desire makes here below all its piety; its anxiety 
makes all its merit; it should have all its consolation in its hopes. 
But this disposition, so essential to the faith, is effaced by the first 
impression made by prosperity on the heart, the impression of at- 
tachment to the earth. ... It is difficult to be displeased when 
everything smiles upon us ; to regard a world of delights as a place 
of exile; to give all our thoughts to another world when this one 
seems to belong to us ; ... to groan like the prophet, about the 
tediousness of our pilgrimage, when we do not feel its toils or its 
worries; and to long for the other life, while this one tempts us 
with its enchantments. ... If you ask what there is wrong in the 
disposition to enjoy the world, ... I reply with St. Augustine, 
that if your desires could control your fate, you would live forever 
on the earth; you would accept as a favor the privilege of living 
eternally in material pleasures, far from God; if you could obtain 
this world for a perpetual home, you would not pray for another.” 

In another place, (III., 2), Massillon gives us this ascetic 
sermon: “ A Christian is the child of the promises, a man of the 
future existence, a citizen of heaven, a portion of Christ, a person 
who longs without ceasing for his reunion with this mystical body, 
a person who advances every day towards spiritual perfection, and 
will never reach it until he arrives at his celestial home.” “ Faith 
teaches us that we are detestable; for there is nothing lovely save 
the celestial order which we have violated ; there is nothing lovely 
save truth and justice which we have deserted; there is nothing 
lovely save the work of God, and we are the work of sin. There- 
fore, we should hate ourselves; otherwise we would be unjust and 
would contradict the liveliest sentiments of our consciences.” 
“ The gospel has no anathemas save for those who would receive 
their gratifications in this life. Everywhere woe is predicted for 
those who laugh and are satiated ; everywhere the promises of con- 
solation are made only to those who suffer here below; everywhere 
the present world is delivered to the sinners as their possession and 
their inheritance; everywhere the recompenses of the saints on earth 


A PRIMER OF SEX RATIONALISM 


33 


are tears and afflictions; and everywhere, finally, their kingdom is 
not of this world.” Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, and other rep- 
resentative Protestants agreed heartily with the gospel as preached 
by the Catholic Massillon. 

Hittell (IV., 317) further remarks: “ In the synoptical gos- 
pels Jesus is represented as the teacher of a system of ascetic 
morality similar to that of the Buddhist monks, but, unlike the 
strict code of Siddartha, it is addressed not to a small class of 
mendicant celibates but to the whole world. It is imposed upon all 
believers equally; there is no exception for age, sex, or condition of 
life. It occupies nearly all the space given to the teaching of mor- 
als in the sayings attributed to Jesus. He says: * Blessed be ye 
poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven.’ ‘ It is easier for a camel 
to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the 
kingdom of God.’ ‘ Woe unto you that are rich, for ye have re- 
ceived your consolation.’ ‘ Whosoever he be that forsaketh not all 
that he hath, he can not be my disciple.’ ‘ Blessed be ye that hun- 
ger now, for ye shall be filled.’ ‘ If any man will sue thee at law 
and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.’ ‘ And who- 
ever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.’ ” There 
is a great deal more of the same kind. 

Q . — What was the attitude of Jesus and of the church nearest 
to him towards sex association ? 

A . — I can most tersely answer by another quotation from 
Hittell, which includes a number of texts from the Bible: “ In 
regard to matrimony Jesus said: ‘ They which shall be accounted 
worthy to obtain that world and the resurrection of the dead 
neither marry nor are given in marriage.’ ‘ Whosoever looketh on 
a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her al- 
ready in his heart. And if thy right eye offend thee pluck it out.’ 
‘ There be eunuchs which have made themselves eunuchs for the 
kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him re- 
ceive it.’ ‘ It is better for thee to enter life maimed, than, having 
two hands, to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be 
quenched; where the worm dieth not.’ . . . The highest saints in 
the heaven of Jesus are celibate men, as we are told in the following 


34 WHAT THE YOUNG NEED TO KNOW— 


passage of Revelation : ‘ A lamb stood on the Mount Sion, and 

with him a hundred and forty and four thousand, wearing his 
father’s name written in their foreheads. . . . These are they which 
were not defiled with women ; for they are virgins. They are they 
which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. These were re- 
deemed from among men, being the first fruits unto God and the 
Lamb.’ The plain meaning of these passages is that celibacy is im- 
portant if not indispensable to the righteousness of Jesus. The first 
quotation . . . means that they who are worthy of salvation do not 
marry in this life ; and is in complete harmony with the subsequent 
quotation from the language of Jesus, and with many in the epistles 
of Paul, who said, ‘ It is good for them [the unmarried] if they 
abide [remain] even as I [in celibacy.] . . . He that is married 
careth for the things that are of this world. . . . The unmarried 
careth for the things of the Lord.’ (I. Cor. vii 8, 33, 34). Jesus 
himself * never married, and, according to the tradition of the 
Roman Catholic Church, Peter put away his wife. That church 
imposes celibacy on its clergy, and ascribes a higher condition of 
righteousness to its priests and to the members of its celibate orders, 
than to the married laity. Jerome, who is a very high authority 
among the Roman Catholics, says that ‘ matrimony fills the earth, 
but celibacy replenishes heaven.’ ” (IV. 320-21). 

Q . — Do the self-assumed disciples of Jesus now generally ob- 
serve the ascetic regulations of their religion? 

A. — No; they openly disregard every precept, except, as pre- 
viously indicated, those relating to sex; these they pretend to obey 
where they are members of celibate societies — not otherwise. But 
the poison of the old teachings has weakened their intelligence and 
corrupted their morals to such a degree that they think their sex 
functions are degrading to their manhood and womanhood, and so 
their lives are greatly at variance, in a vast number of instances, 
with their professions, while wherever the influence of the ancient 
superstitions is felt, men and women and children are ashamed of 
the cause of their existence. How the lives of Christians contradict 
the teachings of the “ master ’’and his ascetic prototypes, it may be 


A PRIMER OF SEX RATIONALISM 


35 


salutary to show here by a few more paragraphs from Mr. Hit- 
tell’s work: 

Fhe Christian who wishes to act in accordance with the moral 
teachings of the gospel must renounce all the pleasures of the world. 
He must have no wealth, no luxury, no fine clothing, no elegant 
dwelling, no political authority, no wife, no anxiety save that for 
his eternal salvation. He should become a hermit or monk ; he 
should govern himself always by the rules of poverty, chastity, and 
submission. He should remember the command, ‘ Resist not evil.’ 
He must stay away from the theater, from the dance, and from the 
concert, and must even abstain from all jovial company. Jesus 
says to him, ‘ Let your communication [conversation] be yea, yea; 
nay, nay, for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil ’ ; and 
again he says, ‘ Every idle word that men speak they shall give an 
account thereof in the day of judgment.’ 

“ These commands are explicit and are not abrogated or quali- 
fied by other passages not here quoted. If they were ever authori- 
tative for anybody, they are now in full force for everybody. They 
have been interpreted literally and made a rule of life by millions of 
Christian monks ; and that they were meant to be taken literally is 
proved by the fact that similar rules had been adopted for centuries 
before the time of the evangelists by the Essene and Buddhist 
ascetics. 

“ The average Christian of our time says these ascetic maxims 
are not addressed to him. He must say something of this kind to 
excuse the discord between his conduct and the gospel precepts 
which he pretends to make the rule of his life. He loves the world. 
He respects humanity. He believes in progress. He is proud of 
his freedom. He protects his rights at the risk of his heart’s blood. 
He delights in the pleasures of love, of wealth, of intellectual com- 
panionship, of the fine arts, and of many forms of luxury. He 
wants an excellent table, elegant clothing, a commodious dwelling, 
good books, dramas, musical entertainments, and social gatherings 
of many kinds. He will not give up all his worldly possessions and 
go out with a single garment, preaching the gospel. Between the 


36 WHAT THE YOUNG NEED TO KNOW- 


position of Dives and that of Lazarus, he prefers the former with 
all its certainties in this world and its chances in the next. 

“ Christians generally, as their habits prove, put a very liberal 
interpretation on the ascetic maxims of Jesus. They understand 
them to mean, first, Do not mutilate yourself; second, marry; third, 
accumulate property; fourth, do not sell it and divide the price 
among the poor ; fifth, live in luxury if you can ; sixth, when a man 
smites you on one cheek, knock him down; seventh, if a man steal 
your coat, send him to jail; eighth, resist evil; ninth, avoid people 
who do not laugh and who limit their conversation to yea, yea, and 
nay, nay; and tenth, enjoy yourself, love this life, do not worry 
about another, and deal justly here. 

“To persons not familiar with orthodox Christian literature, 
this method of interpretation may seem disrespectful to Webster's 
Dictionary, but it is in accordance with the long established and 
general custom of commentators in high repute. The ethical 
works of Roman Catholic and of Protestant theologians, including 
such men as Paley and Liguori, will be found to agree substan- 
tially with the interpretation in the preceding paragraph.” (IV. 
321-23). 

I have quoted somewhat beyond the proper limits of my space 
because it was necessary to lay bare the anti-natural and debasing 
sources of the now prevailing fear of sex, to make clear the truth 
that the people of to-day can not really abide the ascetic notions of 
the desert recluses, although they pretend to think those notions in- 
spired and holy, and to call serious attention to the hypocrisy of 
the moralists who are ever ready to let loose the ravening hounds of 
public hatred and of legal persecution against whoever has the 
hardihood to say that sex is to be accepted without shame and en- 
joyed without guilt. 

0 . — What relation have the ascetic teachings of Jesus and his 
predecessors and successors to the present deplorable condition of 
opinion and practice in the realm of sex? 

A . — They have very largely the relation of cause to effect. 
Whatever tends to make people contented with this world is bad, 
according to the theory of the other-worldians. Sex and its pleas- 


A PRIMER OF SEX RATIONALISM 


37 


ures, from the delights of lovers to the joys of parents, are the 
most seductive of earthly temptations; for these blisses men and 
women may well barter their hopes of heaven, for them they may 
well smother their fears of hell. So it has come to pass that the 
distrust of sex has survived in the lands where the gospel has been 
carried; the knowledge that men and women would prefer this 
world with love to a chance of a heaven after death has made the 
priesthoods of Christendom the perpetual libelers of the sweetest 
of passions. They have made not only devout believers ashamed 
of the agency of life but they generally have been successful in hold- 
ing so-called Freethinkers as worshipers at the altar of ascetic cor- 
ruption. The terrible blunder which led the anti-naturalist to 
depreciate earth in order to enhance the value of heaven in the eyes 
of his disciples was one of the most costly mistakes ever made by 
man. As Mr. Hittell has so lucidly shown, the influence of 
Eastern asceticism had become almost nil in the West, so far as 
nearly all the non-sexual affairs of rational people were concerned, 
until the end-of-the-century recrudescence of mysticism, but he 
could have rendered the cause of truth a still greater service than 
he has if he had pointed out how the hypocrisy of those millions 
who formally accept a creed which they do not attempt to put into 
practice in every-day business, pollutes every relation of life, and 
how our present sex associations are debased by the old gospel 
falsehoods and uncounted numbers of men and women cast upon 
the rocks of hopeless disaster by the misleading lights still burned 
by cleric and moralist in obedience to the ignorant instructions of 
their legendary guides. 

Q . — Can there be fearless investigation of the problem of sex, 
untainted enjoyment of the delights of love, candor in the expres- 
sion of convictions, harmony of beliefs and actions, and just deal- 
ing with those loved, if men are slaves to the delusions that their 
hopes of eternal bliss are dependent upon their renunciation of hap- 
piness in this world and that the organs and acts which perpetuate 
the race are shameful and destructive of purity and holiness ? 

A. — No; in a society where such sentiments prevail there will 
be no general accurate knowledge of the most important facts, the 


38 WHAT THE YOUNG NEED TO KNOW— 


springs of human joy will be poisoned, hypocrisy and cowardice 
will be almost universal, there will be a constant and agonizing 
struggle between belief and desire, between theory and life; and 
deceit, trickery, and treachery will characterize the love and sexual 
relations of men and women. It is a reasonable assumption that 
this will be so, and the assumption is proved to be absolutely un- 
assailable, by both the records of history and the facts of our own 
experience and observation. The ascetic doctrine has been an un- 
mitigated curse to mankind, a veritable “ Asiatic mildew.” How 
vain has been the mad attempt to force the Eastern creed of physical 
and emotional emasculation upon the life-abounding and life- 
loving West is well told by Ella Wheeler in the words which 
she puts into the mouth of Clarimonde: 

Adieu, Romauld ! But thou canst not forget me. 

Although no more I haunt thy dreams at night. 

Thy hungering heart forever must regret me, 

And starve for those lost moments of delight. 

Naught shall avail thy priestly rites and duties — 

Nor fears of Hell, nor hopes of Heaven beyond; 

Before the Cross shall rise my fair form’s beauties — 

The lips, the limbs, the eyes of Clarimonde. 

Like gall the wine sipped from the sacred chalice 
Shall taste to one who knew my red mouth’s bliss, 

When Youth and Beauty dwelt in Love’s own palace, 

And life flowed on in one eternal kiss. 

********* 

Yet, for the love of God, thy hand hath riven 
Our welded souls. But not in prayer well-conned, 

Not in thy dearly purchased peace of Heaven, 

Canst thou forget those hours with Clarimonde. 

Again, in “ Ad Finem ” ; 

A lighter sin or a lesser error 
Might change through hope or fear divine; 

But there is no fear, and hell has no terror 
To change or alter a love like mine. 


A PRIMER OF SEX RATIONALISM 


39 


So the perpetual conflict between earthly happiness and heaven- 
ly duty” has torn the hearts and racked the brains of men and 
women through the dark, sad centuries of asceticism. It is full 
time that that needless and disastrous conflict ceased. Let us for- 
ever be done with the foolish condemnation of that force, of those 
functions, without which we could not be, either to make the most 
of our mother earth or to blindly sacrifice her opportunities in the 
delusive hope of compensation in ghostland. Let us cease to be 
ashamed of what makes us men, of what makes us women, of what 
gives us the kisses of lovers and the encircling arms of babes. Let 
us look at sex honestly, candidly enjoying it, fearlessly enhancing 
its joys, pitying while correcting its mistakes, hesitating not to gaze 
upon it as it stands naked in the electric light of outer nature and 
of human experience. 

Q . — Is sex openly manifested in the forms of life lower in the 
scale than man? 

A . — It is; wherever there is sentience there is sex; that is, there 
is to be found — whether in the simplest method of propagation, 
fission, or in the intermediate methods between that and unisexual 
propagation, or in the last — the palpable evidence of the presence 
of that force of reproduction which mysticism and asceticism have 
derided, contemned, and misused. Ocean, air, and land teem with 
the fruits of sex. We find sex in the valley and on the mountain- 
top ; on the prairie and in the forest. Everywhere it reproduces the 
old; everywhere it gives birth to the new. We walk in the garden, 
in the cultivated field, in the wild wood, over the steppes, by the 
river, along the marge of the sea — all about us is sex; it is present 
to the ear, to the eye, to the nostril, to taste, to the touch. Its 
organs, its manifestations, its germs, all force themselves upon our 
attention. Its music rings in the wooing song of the bird, it vibrates 
from the wing of the insect, it shrills defiance from the throat of 
chanticleer, it roars out its bass in the bellow of the bull. Its multi- 
colors glow in the flowers and are stamped on hair and fur and 
feather. On every side valiant knights of the vegetable and animal 
kingdoms list in the tournaments of love, where sex meets sex and 
the joy is alike for victor and for vanquished. Upon our hands and 


4 o WHAT THE YOUNG NEED TO KNOW— 


garments drops the prodigal pollen of tree and shrub and cereal; 
under our careless feet we trample cell and seed. Here are ever 
open to the sun the loving toil and the beauties of sex; mock 
modesty comes not to make prudes or hypocrites of the foolish ; here 
is no shame-prompted concealment of the instrumentalities whereby 
matter is perpetually given new forms useful and fair, loving and 
lovable each to its kind, for here there is no priest to preach con- 
tempt of earth and longing for impossible heavens while he fattens 
on the offerings of his poor dupes. 

Q . — Is sex an important factor in human endeavor and ac- 
complishment ? 

A . — It is one of the most important, if not the most important. 
The necessity for food, raiment, and shelter induces all, even the 
savage, to put forth a certain amount of exertion, sufficient to main- 
tain life at a dull level of enjoyment, but it is love that inspires to 
heroic endeavor, that spurs men and women on in the pursuit of 
wealth, fame, learning and power; that overcomes seemingly insur- 
mountable obstacles, and that opens the way for leisure, for science, 
for art, for literature, for every form of culture. Love is in the 
sword of the liberator, in the measures of the poet, in the notes of 
the singer, in the brush of the painter, in the cunning of the in- 
ventor, in the eloquence of the orator, in the struggles of the re- 
former, in the adventurous daring of the explorer. Abject indeed 
is he in spirit, narrow is he in thought, famine-stricken is he in 
sympathy, who does not find in love the stimulus that lifts him to 
the greatest altitudes he ever reaches, that sustains him under mis- 
fortunes, and adds tenfold to the pleasures of prosperity. What 
will he, what will she think of this sentence, of this witticism, of 
this book, of this picture, of this deed of courage, of this invention, 
of this product of my hand — that is the question that is ever sha- 
ping itself in the brain of the lover, and, which in all ages and lands 
while the race remains will do more than all laws, all institutions, 
and all religions to give freedom, enlightenment, and happiness to 
the generations which are to come. Nothing can be more foolish 
than to depreciate sex, to make it appear as a thing of shame, to set 
it in the market-place for sale, and to cover it with the filthy rags 


A PRIMER OF SEX RATIONALISM 


4i 


of convention. Very literally, love is life. As life must be free to 
be at its best, so must love be free, for free life is inconceivable 
without free love. 

Q . — What is immodesty? 

A. — Non-conformity. In all ages, at all times, among all 
peoples, he or she is immodest who does not follow the local cus- 
toms in dress or the absence of dress. Whatever law, fashion, 
climate, religion, or occupation makes the ordinary dress is the 
modest dress, in that tribe, caste, or nation. Hence, affirmatively, 
modesty is conformity. “ In the valley of the Orinoco, the woman 
is immodest who appears among strangers without a coat of paint. 
An aboriginal girl there, to please a European visitor, put on a 
gown, but when some of her tribe appeared she was much abashed 
and threw off the gown hastily.” (Hittell, I. 153). 

Q . — What is the savage estimate of nudity as related to mod- 
esty, and what are some of the tribal differences of custom? 

A . — “ Among savages generally the sentiment that nudity is 
immodest, if not absolutely lacking, is very weak. In tropical 
climates throughout the year, and in temperate regions, in the hot 
season, the children who have not arrived at puberty are nearly 
all naked, and so are the adults in Tasmania, parts of Australia, 
the Pelew, Mariana, and Torres islands, and among the Ovambos, 
Batokas, Obongos, Bubes, Lufiras, Wakambas, Kaironoos, Goldas, 
Botocudos, Orinocos, Arowaks, Tapajos, Puris, and Coroados of 
both sexes. To distinguish himself from his subjects, the chief of 
the Musgas wears clothes. The men of Shir, Neuhr, Bari, Ma- 
henge, New Caledonia, and California and the Maori warriors, on 
military expeditions, are nude and so are the married women of 
Ganguella, Watusi, Uape, Congo, and parts of Australia and Mel- 
anesia, and the wrcmarried women of Fan, Dor, Neuhr, Dinka, 
Shillook, Ashira, Obbo, Tupi, Guaype, and parts of Australia and 
South America. The Madombe bride, without any clothing save a 
coat of whitewash, calls on her friends to announce her approaching 
marriage.” (Hittell, I. 153. See also Monteiro, 187; Klemm I. 
302.) As generally among savages the wife is expected to be more 
circumspect in her conduct than is the girl, she has to be more care- 


42 WHAT THE YOUNG NEED TO KNOW- 


ful how she clothes herself. “ In Fiji, the only dress of the 
marriageable girl is a girdle with fringe three inches long; of the 
childless wife a foot long; of the wife with a child, a foot and a 
half long. The savage woman usually wears no clothing above the 
waist in warm weather, and a small motive induces her to throw off 
that below the waist. Thus if she has to walk across a stream 
where she will be splashed, she takes it off. A Kaffir girl in a mixed 
company received a present of a new dress, and immediately took 
off the old one, so that she could put on the new one. In many 
tribes the women are dressed while away from home or at home 
entertaining visitors, and nude at other times. The most common 
feminine garment is a fringe girdle, the fringe, from three to 
eighteen inches long, consisting of flags, reeds, strips of bark, twine, 
or leather thongs. If beads are procurable, they are much prized 
for decorating this simple but important article of apparel. . . . The 
Wahehe woman wears a string of beads around her waist with a 
tail hanging down behind; and it would be highly unbecoming for 
her to go into company without the tail. The Watuta, Wanyuema, 
Shillook, and Vate women have string girdles with an apron or 
fringe in front and a tail behind, and the tail should be longer than 
the appendage in front. The dress of the obscurely fair sex in the 
Apono and Ishogo tribes consists of two pieces of cloth, one on each 
side of the body from the armpits to the knees. These pieces must 
meet behind; whether they meet in front or not is less important. 
The Dor women comply with the requirements of modesty, as they 
understand it, by wearing a little twig hanging down in front from 
a string girdle. An apron six inches square attached to a similar 
girdle suffices for the married women of Fan, Shir, Bari, Monbutto, 
Mundruca, and some New Guinea tribes.” (Hittell, I, 154.) 

Q . — Was the introduction of clothing in any degree due to the 
desire to ornament the person or to appear distinguished ? 

A . — Yes, that desire had much to do with the adoption of 
clothing, with the various kinds invented, and consequently with 
the establishment of the customs that came to have more than 
the force of law for the members of tribes and the citizens of na- 
tions. In fact, it is probable that in the tropical countries clothes 


A PRIMER OF SEX RATIONALISM 


43 


were at first worn neither as a protection against the inclemen- 
cies of the weather nor from a sense of shame. As instanced in 
the foregoing quotations, in the case of the Musgus, chiefs wore 
certain garments to distinguish them from the common herd, as 
they wore headdresses of feathers and other materials, arranged 
their hair in a different way, and carried about on their persons 
more beads, metals, stones, and other crude ornaments than the 
rank and file could afford or were permitted to wear. In some 
tribes the woman wears from twenty to seventy-five pounds of 
anklets, bracelets, collars, and body bands, consisting of beads, 
brass, and iron. A coat of paint may be a symbol of rank, or 
merely the dress ordered by custom. In many tribes the man is 
not in fashion unless he has numerous scars on his body. An 
almost infinite number of mutilations are fashionable, some in 
one tribe and some in another. Heavy rings are worn in the 
ears, the nose, the lips, and pendent from other parts of the 
body. One of the most suggestive of the discoveries of travel- 
ers is that some tribes ornament the very parts that modern 
modesty decrees shall always be hidden, and this ornamentation 
is for the purpose of calling attention to those parts, so that we see 
that here dress was invented to reveal rather than to conceal. 
This custom survives in the “ full dress ” of fashionable society. 

Q . — But is it true that custom determines the modesty or 
immodesty of apparel to-day in civilized countries? 

A. — Yes. It is considered shameful for men (except priests 
and some judges) to wear the flowing garments of women, and 
for women to wear the garments of men, and such substitution 
is generally an offense against the law. Both men and women 
can wear at the seashore clothes that would cause their arrest 
if they appeared in them on the streets of the city. It is fashion- 
able for women to reveal the lower parts of their bodies in the 
surf and the upper part at the ball and opera, while the oppo- 
site procedure would be regarded as scandalous to a degree 
beyond the power of words to express. If you should inadvert- 
ently come into the presence of your woman acquaintance when 
she was in her own house and dressed as she was the day before 


44 WHAT THE YOUNG NEED TO KNOW— 


when she coquetted with you on the sands, she would flee from 
your sight in dire confusion. In this and the European coun- 
tries the most modest of women will show her face in public, 
but in Turkey and others of the Eastern countries, that act 
would be so shameful as to merit condign punishment. Here, 
at the behest of fashion, too many clothes are worn, or too few; 
enough to overheat the body, or not sufficient to protect it 
from cold and damp; the vital organs are constricted, the figure 
deformed by hideous contrivances that do credit to their sav- 
age prototypes, and the attention of the on-looker particularly 
challenged for the very parts that “ morality ” asserts should be 
never seen by any but the husband and never spoken of above a 
whisper. Any attempt to make woman’s dress more healthful 
and comfortable is lampooned by the cheap wits of the press, 
moralized against by the Dry-as-Dusts, preached against by most 
of the ministers, sneered at by the dowagers of fashion, and 
made the quarry of the notoriety hunters of “ reform ” and 
of legislation. Even as I write, in this year of Christian grace, 
one thousand eight hundred and ninety-seven, bills are pending 
in several legislatures making it a misdemeanor for any woman 
to appear in public astride a bicycle, or wearing bloomers, knicker- 
bockers, short skirts, or shirt waists! And a woman is at the 
head of a society which is urging on these jacks-in-office in their 
reactionary crusade! (Date of first edition.) , 

Q . — What has sex rationalism to say affirmatively concerning 
nudity and clothes? 

A . — That such garments are to be worn as may be neces- 
sary to secure the comfort of the body. That outside the privacy 
of our own apartments, when we are compelled to sacrifice com- 
fort to avoid disastrous encounters with the law or to escape the 
odious attentions of the mob, we can do no better than submit, but 
should take care to enter our protests whenever protests give 
promise of accomplishing any good result. We will teach our 
children, by precept and example, that for us clothes are useful 
just in the ratio that they permit freedom of motion and secure the 
proper conditions of warmth. We will say to them that nudity 


A PRIMER OF SEX RATIONALISM 


45 


is as natural as breathing, and as innocent. When no superstitious 
persons are present, they will be encouraged to get all the air-baths 
and sun-baths possible, which are as wholesome as water-baths, 
and as necessary. From their earliest infancy the children will 
learn from observation that the human body is in all its parts free 
to be studied, whether it is the body of a man or a woman or a 
child. They will not know what it is to be ashamed of the nude 
unless they learn the evil lesson from the religionists of the out- 
side world, and when they do we will take all the pains we can 
to neutralize this poison of supernatural moralism. 

Q . — You have referred to surf-bathing, and that calls up the 
subject of the relation of bathing to dress — what is gained by 
wearing clothes in the water? 

A. — Nothing, except, perhaps, immunity from blistering when 
one is long exposed to the sun when it is shining fervidly. But 
inasmuch as it is not desirable to remain long in the water at one 
time, it is probable that it would be better even in outdoor bathing 
to discard all garments. This, of course, is advice for the most 
tender of civilizees only; for persons of even ordinary robustness 
of constitution clothes are not needed in any kind of bathing, and 
they are a nuisance having not one redeeming feature. Bathing- 
garments are the invention of prudery, and are likely to be kept 
in use indefinitely by the disciples of Mrs. Grundy in alliance with 
the unfortunates who have poor figures or blemishes of the flesh. 
In Japan, women, men, and children have bathed together nude 
for centuries, if not from time immemorial, without damage to 
morals or health. Now, however, they are slowly succumbing to 
the corrupting modesty of the Christian nations, and it is to be 
feared that ere long they will be as shame-faced and debased as 
we are. Except in public bathing-places, the children of radicals, 
and radicals themselves, will not be hampered by clothes when they 
take their baths. If they want their clothes cleansed they will 
send them to the laundry or the renovator, for garments can not 
satisfactorily be attended to when on the human body. 

Q . — What is the attitude of ascetism toward nudity in art? 

A . — That of bitter opposition, of uncompromising enmity. 


46 WHAT THE YOUNG NEED TO KNOW— 


The painting or statue of the nude is contemplated with outward 
horror by the Puritan, whatever may be the real effect it has 
upon him. He rails against all art which is approximately true to 
life — we have no recognized art that is not partly a compromise 
with convention — as the most pernicious of the devices of his devil ; 
he calls it “ vile,” “ corrupting,” “ indecent,” “ degrading,” “ in- 
sulting to womanhood,” “vicious,” “obscene,” “sinful,” “sensual,” 

“ lewd,” “ the representation of a corrupt heathen mythology ” ; 
in a word, over the most beautiful creations of the painter’s brush, 
over the “ living, breathing marble ” of the sculptor’s chisel, he 
daubs the filthy pigments of his own imagination, and then trium- 
phantly calls upon us to behold how dirty and debasing are the . 
pictured canvas and the hewn stone! He is the enemy of the un- 
expurgated man and woman, of the lovely naked child, of nature 
without the loin-cloth of the savage. He incites the fanatic mob 
to burn the paintings of the nude that hallow the homes of the 
rich and the galleries of art; he invokes the aid of the politicians 
and from these spoilers of their fellows he obtains laws that put 
true art under the ban — that station the spies of the most vicious 
of meddlers in the post-offices of the people and at the doors of 
the art stores and of the studios; he is happy when one of the 
minions of these vicious purity mongers bribes some poor artist to 
paint the figure of a woman on a sea-shell or a bit of glass and 
then arrests and drags away to jail the victim of his seductions; 
he glories in the mental slavery, the moral confusion, and the 
physical servitude, that permit the ascetic surveillance of the art 
and literature of the American people, and he grows more and more 
insolent as greater and greater power is given into his hands by 
dullards on the one side and their represenatives on the other. 

Q . — What sort of argument does the Puritan advance in favor 
of the veil of immodesty and its law-compelled wearing? 

A . — His arguments are of all arguments the most silly. As a 
fair sample of them, read this excerpt from a decision of Judge 
Phillips, of the United States Circuit Court: 


There is in the popular conception and heart such a thing as 


A PRIMER OF SEX RATIONALISM 


47 


modesty. It was born in the Garden of Eden. After Adam and Eve 
ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, they passed from that con- 
dition of perfectibility which some people nowadays aspire to, and, 
their eyes being opened, they discerned that there was both good and 
evil; “and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig-leaves 
together, and made themselves aprons.” From that day to this civilized 
man has carried with him the sense of shame, the feeling that there 
were some things on which the eye, the mind, should not look; and 
where men and women become so depraved by the use, or so insensate 
from perverted education, that they will not veil their eyes, or hold 
their tongues, the government should perform the office for them in 
protection of the social compact and the body politic. 

That is one of the most perfect mixtures I have ever seen; 
it is compounded in exactly equal proportions of the inanity of 
superstition and the impudence of irresponsible power. In it we 
have misrule based on myth. Judge Phillips seeks to erect an 
edifice of usurpation on a foundation of primitive ignorance. He 
assumes that we have no right to gaze on the unclothed human 
body, to speak of the facts of sexual physiology, and he proposes 
that whoever does look or speak shall be punished in the name of 
the “ social compact,” of the “ body politic,” which are two more 
fictions. His assumption has its source in discredited legends and 
his intention is the purpose of the despot. This argument of the 
federal judge is as good a one as was ever formulated against the 
naked truth, in body and word, and as no better could be made, 
the sensationalist, Dwight L. Moody, quotes it in a long diatribe 
of his own against art, which was printed in the New York 
“Sunday Journal” of January 31, 1897. The excerpt is taken 
from the decision of Judge Phillips in the cause of “ The United 
States vs. Harman,” 45 F. R., 423. 

Q . — Will the children of consistent sex rationalists be taught 
that the nude in art is innocent? 

A . — If such teaching is necessary to counteract any pernicious 
ascetic notions which they may imbibe “ in the world.” But wise 
parents and guardians will simply assume the perfect innocence 
of the artistic representations of the nude, just as they will assume 
the innocence of the unclothed body. That the human figure 
should be painted on canvas and represented in marble and bronze 


48 WHAT THE YOUNG NEED TO KNOW— 


just as it is the child will take for granted unless his mind is 
poisoned by the moralism of the Puritan. To be sure, even artistic 
masterpieces themselves may plant the seeds of asceticism in the 
mind of the child, for art has partly surrendered to Grundy; it 
did that long ago, and no artist is brave enough to break through 
the fences of precedent in anything that he paints for public exhibi- 
tion. No sculptor of this age, so far as I am aware, dares to repro- 
duce the human body faithfully. Every picture or statue is conven- 
tionalized in one way or another. The bright boy or girl, who 
has seen the body of the adult man and woman, must perceive that 
in the painting and statue there is something lacking. The sense- 
less omissions challenge wonder and inquiry and help create the 
demand for the less artistic but truer representations which are so 
eagerly sought by young and old alike, among those who have been 
educated by the orthodox moralists. Sex rationalists will explain 
to their children that the omissions they have noticed are due to 
stupid adherence to a precedent, and that no valid reason can be 
found for this persistence in misrepresentation. 

Q . — Has asceticism invaded literature? 

A. — Yes; because of its incursions our literature is a sham, a 
lie, a shameful parody of the truth. It is not a faithful transcript 
of the human mind and an accurate picture of human life. It 
evades, conceals, falsifies outright. It is tame, stupid, silly, mis- 
leading, injurious. It plays in an amateurish, cowardly way with 
the most pregnant passion of men and women. Some of the 
mightiest productions of human genius are outlawed by the midgets 
of the censorship, creatures by excess of courtesy called men, crea- 
tures upon whom a Rabelais, a Balsac, or a Rene Le Sage 
would not have bestowed even the notice of a contemptuous fillip of 
wit. The writer who should express all that the whole life of man 
expresses would find his work in the clutches of Anthony Com- 
stock, his publisher in prison, and his own name a synonym of 
shame in the mouths of the unthinking millions. Puritanism sets a 
price upon the head of the thinker, even as did Rome and Geneva. 
While se?c is banned by church and state and fashion we can not 
expect that our literature will be free and virile. 


A PRIMER OF SEX RATIONALISM 


49 


I am going to quote here a strong paragraph which I have be- 
fore presented to many of my readers, but it well will bear repeti- 
tion. It was written by James Thomson and appears in “ The 
Swinburne Controversy ” : “ Our literature should be the clear 
and faithful mirror of our whole world of life, but at present there 
are vast realms of thought and imagination and passion and action, 
of which it is not allowed to give any reflex at all, or is allowed to 
give only a reflex so obscure and distorted as to be worse than none. 
But, it may be objected, suppose Satyrs come leering into your 
mirror and Bacchantes whirl before it? I answer that the business 
of a mirror is clear reflection; if it does not faithfully image the 
Satyr, how can it faithfully image Hyperion? And do you dread 
that the Satyr will be preferred to Hyperion, when both stand im- 
aged in clear light before us? It is only when the windows are cur- 
tained, when the mirror is a black gulf and its portraitures are 
vague dark shadows, that the beautiful and the noble can pass 
undistinguished from the hideous and the vile. If, indeed, the 
realities not reflected became unrealities, were annihilated, then 
there would be some sense in veiling those portions of the mirror 
in front of which certain features of our life are exposed. And if 
that which sees not could not be seen, it would be very sensible of 
the hunted ostrich to hide its head in the sand. But we all know 
that in darkness what is filthy and vile grows ever filthier and viler, 
what is pure and sweet sickens and decays.” 

What James Thomson says, elsewhere in the same essay, of 
the degradation of literature in England, is still more applicable in 
the United States: “ The condition of our literature in these days 
is disgraceful to a nation of men — Bumble has drugged all its 
higher powers, and only the rudest shocks can arouse them from 
their torpor. ... ‘ We have left undone those things which we 

ought to have done ; and we have done those things which we ought 
not to have done ; and there is no health in us.’ We have suppressed 
mention of all facts which Bumble would fain ignore, and utterance 
of all opinions likely to disturb his sacred peace; we have canted 
enough to nauseate the angels, and have continually lied for God 
as for a man to pleasure him; so our popular books are fit for 


50 WHAT THE YOUNG NEED TO KNOW— 


emasculated imbeciles. ... In the meanwhile the police reports 
are full of putrid flesh, all the blue books are crammed with 
statistical dry bones; flesh from the carcasses and bones from the 
skeletons in that mass of death and corruption under our imperial 
[republican] whited sepulchre. . . . The stupidest popular book 
would not be popular did it not find a large number of people still 
more stupid than itself, to whom it is really entertaining and in- 
structive. These stupid people one does not blame; one can only 
pity or envy them according to one’s mood. But what shall one say 
of that large number of educated people who are not stupid, who 
are familiar with continental literature; who yet, if an English 
book appears advocating ideas such as they have been delighted 
with in a French or German dress, feign astonishment and horror, 
and join with all the poor little curs of Bumbledom in yelping and 
snarling at it? These men who know well what they are doing 
are the accomplices of Bumble who does not know what he is doing, 
who fondly fancies that he is doing something very different, in 
starving on thin diet and stupefying with narcotic drugs the 
intellect of our nation once so robust and active.” 

Q . — You would have the whole of human action and aspira- 
tion the storehouse of the novelist, the poet, the essayist? 

A. — Yes. Nothing should be withheld from them; they should 
be free to draw from this storehouse to their utmost limit of 
capacity for construction and adornment. No longer should they 
be forced to make bricks without straw, to play Hamlet with 
Hamlet left out, to work with chained hands, to walk with 
manacled feet, to see with eyes half-closed. We can not be free 
until the sex taboo is taken off every fact and thought of life. 


LIFE, LIBERTY, AND ETHICS 


Pamphlets by EDWIN C. WALKER 


Our Worship of Primitive Social Guesses, 1 5c 
Vice: Its Friends and Its Foes, 15c 
What the Young Need to Know— A Primer of Sex 
Rationalism. Second Edition, 1 5c 
Who Is the Enemy; ANTHONY COMSTOCK or 
YOU? Who sustains the Censorship? 20c 
Communism and Conscience; PENTECOST and 
Paradox. Also, Crimes and Criminals. 25c 
Bible Temperance. Liquor Drinking Defended, 
Commended, and Enjoined by the Bible. 1 Oc 
The Revival of Puritanism, 10c 
Religion and Rationalism. The Relation of Each 
to Human Liberty. 5c 

The Future of Secularism— When Will the Cause 
of Justice Triumph? 5c 
GIORDANO BRUNO. His Life, Teachings, and 
Martyrdom. 5c 

Variety versus Monogamy. An Address. 5c 


THE RIGHTS OF PERIODICALS 


BY JANES E. NORTON, JR. 

An illuminating and convincing defense of a free 
press, exposing the jugglery of the postal bu- 
reaucracy with second-class mail matter 
Price, 10 Cents 

LIBERTY: 

Political, Religious, Social, and Sexual 

BY A. F. TINDALL, A. T. C. L. 


An Essay towards the Formation of an Anti-Persecution 
Society to Defend the Rights of Individuals against State 
Interference and Puritan Persecution 

Price, 10 Cents 


EDWIN C. WALKER, 

244 W. 143d St., New York City 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




BY ELIZABETH E. EVANS 


0 017 405 152 5 

THE HOME CyCLOPELMA 


BY C. B. FOOTE, M. D. 


A curious book for curious persons, and a sensi- 
ble book for every one. It is valuable in every 
way; 1 248 pages; 400 illustrations (eighty in col- 
ors); 250 recipes; is tastefully bound in cloth 
Price, $2 

VACCINATION A CRIME 


BY FELIX L. OSWALD, n. D. 


Vaccination Spreads Diseases. Vacccination Impairs the 
Organic Functions. Vaccination Encourages Reliance on 
Worthless Remedies. Vaccination Spreads Smallpox. <1 
Compulsory Vaccination Furnishes Dangerous Legal Prec- 
edents. Fallacies of the dENNER Doctrine Illustrated 

Price, 10 Cents. If mailed, 13 Cents 

MARRED IN THE MAKING 


BY LYDIA KINGS1T1LL COPinANDEP 


A tragedy of heredity; the bale and ban of unlov- 
ing union 
Price, 25 Cents 

THE CHRIST MyTH-A STUDy 


An examination of the legends of an idealization 
Price, 25 Cents 

THE NEW HEDONISM 


BY GRANT ALLEN q Hagnificent q Price, 5c 


EDWIN C. WALKER, 

W. 1 43d St., New york City; 


